Oculus CTO John Carmack also offers up his defense of the acquisition.

Based on the immediate reaction to Tuesday's surprise announcement that Facebook is buying VR headset maker Oculus, you'd have thought the move was effectively a death sentence for what was previously the most promising virtual reality technology in decades. At the extremes, some particularly vitriolic commenters even felt comfortable enough to suggest the death sentence should extend to the technology's creators and their families.

"We expected a negative reaction from people in the short term, [but] we did not expect to be getting so many death threats and harassing phone calls that extended to our families," Oculus Founder Palmer Luckey said in a reddit post this weekend. "We know we will prove ourselves with actions and not words, but that kind of shit is unwarranted, especially since it is impacting people who have nothing to do with Oculus."

Elsewhere in the reddit thread, Luckey said that the initial reaction wasn't really surprising, but it still obviously felt undeserved from his point-of-view. "We expected a kneejerk reaction from people who don't have all the information we do and will not have it for some time," he wrote. "We expected a negative reaction, that does not mean we think the reaction is warranted. My primary goal is the long term success of VR, not short term warm and fuzzy feelings."

Luckey's statement comes after a Game Informer interview last week in which Oculus VP of Product Nate Mitchell also expressed surprise at the extent of the initial negative reaction. Still, Mitchell added that he thinks opinions are starting to turn around with the passage of time.

"We assumed that the reaction would be negative, especially from our core community," he told the magazine. "Beyond our core community, we expected it would be positive. I don't think we expected it to be so negative. As people begin to digest it a bit and think about it, you can see that Twitter and reddit are swinging back the opposite direction. The onus is on us to educate people, and we want to share everything we’re doing."

All that said, Luckey admitted he might have reacted similarly if he were a VR fan simply following the news from the outside. Responding to a reddit commenter asking "wouldn't you have been pissed," Luckey responded, "Knowing what the public knows, maybe. Knowing what I know, seeing the technology this deal will directly enable? No."

There is a case to be made for being like Valve and trying to build a new VR ecosystem like Steam from the ground up. This is probably what most of the passionate fans wanted to see. The difference is that, for years, the industry thought Valve was nuts, and they had the field to themselves. Valve deserves all their success for having the vision and perseverance to see it through to the current state.

VR won't be like that. The experience is too obviously powerful, and it makes converts on contact. The fairly rapid involvement of the Titans is inevitable, and the real questions were how deeply to partner and with who.

Honestly, I wasn't expecting Facebook (or this soon). I have zero personal background with them, and I could think of other companies that would have more obvious synergies. However, I do have reasons to believe that they get the Big Picture as I see it and will be a powerful force towards making it happen. You don't make a commitment like they just did on a whim.

Carmack previously tweeted that he "would expect Facebook to not exert any overt control over Oculus unless Oculus fumbles badly a few times, at which point they SHOULD."

Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl

You truly had no idea how much complete and utter disdain your core audience had with the a completely amoral and unethical organization like Facebook?

really?

Naive doesn't seem to even cover that. (I don't support the idea of death threats over the decision, and harassing family is completely uncalled for.)

He and Mitchell both said they were expecting a negative reaction, so saying they had "no idea" of the core audience's disdain is just wrong. That said, I think not expecting death threats is kind of the minimum level we need to function in society.

As bad as Oculus being acquired by Facebook probably is, sending death threats is taking things too far.

It would really disappoint me if it wasn't a group of idiot juveniles like 4chan or anonymous. I can understand a bunch of entitled script kiddies freaking the fuck out enough to think death threats were warranted, but I like to think that the rest of the internet is relatively sane.

I always take these types of hyperbolic claims with a grain of salt. He knew what the reaction would be, but he also knew that the bad reaction would be swamped out of the sounds of $$$ ringing in his ears. Also nice to see that with the help of the Facebook PR department every time someone writes "Palmer Luckey can DIAF" it can be elevated to a oooh so scary death threat.

I always take these types of hyperbolic claims with a grain of salt. He knew what the reaction would be, but he also knew that the bad reaction would be swamped out of the sounds of $$$ ringing in his ears. Also nice to see that with the help of the Facebook PR department every time someone writes "Palmer Luckey can DIAF" it can be elevated to a oooh so scary death threat.

You truly had no idea how much complete and utter disdain your core audience had with the a completely amoral and unethical organization like Facebook?

really?

Naive doesn't seem to even cover that. (I don't support the idea of death threats over the decision, and harassing family is completely uncalled for.)

He and Mitchell both said they were expecting a negative reaction, so saying they had "no idea" of the core audience's disdain is just wrong. That said, I think not expecting death threats is kind of the minimum level we need to function in society.

I think it is either naive or stupid to have not expected this. If you have been around the internet for very long you have seen death threats for a lot less than this, so that they thought they would not be getting some was just wishful thinking.

Now I don't condone that kind of thing, and think it is totally stupid and evil, but I am saying... has he never been on the internet before?

How is it a "high horse of entitlement" to have a serious negative reaction to something that was seen as a long term hope coming to fruition being sold to a company like Facebook?

Any type of threat toward the actual people, or anyone close to them, is clearly beyond the pale, and shows that the Internet is chock full of wing nuts and truly despicable people. That said, I'll be hard pressed to lay my money down for a Rift when it finally reaches the market simply because of Zuckerberg's influence. While the members of Oculus have stated that they maintain intellectual freedom and control over the development of the Rift, I have my doubts that it's going to play out that way. That usually isn't how things work nowadays. Time will tell, yes, but I'm reserving my judgement, and I'll be very difficult to convince.

Now I don't condone that kind of thing, and think it is totally stupid and evil, but I am saying... has he never been on the internet before?

I think people just don't take it as seriously when it happens to other people for other reasons.

At the same time, we shouldn't let these threats - deplorable, of course - overshadow the rightfully negative reaction to the sell-out. They expected a negative reaction and did it anyway, so we shouldn't be siding with them just because of the threats.

Whether or not you like Facebook buying them out. They probably needed to get bought. The technology is neat, but bringing it to the consumer level is going to take a lot of money. Someone was going to buy them if nothing else, for pure investment purposes.

It could have been Google. Would that be better? Microsoft? They'd be tore asunder in the infighting. Apple? Talk about being absorbed by the collective. Companies Apple buy disappear and bits and pieces become part of AppleWorld, and Apple doesn't care about gaming.

Facebook has the dough and it's very likely they were granted wide autonomy. Meanwhile, Facebook can help keep them in front of the public. Facebook has always opened up their platform to third parties. And Facebook loves games.

I suspect that Facebook sees them mainly as an investment and was interested keeping them out of the hands of certain rivals. I can't see how Facebook can integrate them into the current platform except an occasional status post.

You truly had no idea how much complete and utter disdain your core audience had with the a completely amoral and unethical organization like Facebook?

really?

Naive doesn't seem to even cover that. (I don't support the idea of death threats over the decision, and harassing family is completely uncalled for.)

He and Mitchell both said they were expecting a negative reaction, so saying they had "no idea" of the core audience's disdain is just wrong. That said, I think not expecting death threats is kind of the minimum level we need to function in society.

I think it is either naive or stupid to have not expected this. If you have been around the internet for very long you have seen death threats for a lot less than this, so that they thought they would not be getting some was just wishful thinking.

Now I don't condone that kind of thing, and think it is totally stupid and evil, but I am saying... has he never been on the internet before?

Good thing he's not a certain other CTO/CEO otherwise things could get...really ugly.

The thing is, no matter how hard he tries to convince people of otherwise, FB will not only have a strong influence on Oculus but also use user data in a number of profit-maximizing ways.

Of course. If Palmer honestly thinks otherwise, he's delusional. FB isn't going to pay $2 billion for a gaming peripheral (which is what Oculus claimed in their Kickstarter they were developing, and peripherals just aren't worth that much), and Facebook's entire business model is based around monitoring users and selling their data. Of course they're going to use the Rift to extend that. There is no other sane reason for them to make this purchase.

We'll have to wait and see just how intrusive that monitoring is. Given how intrusive Facebook is with their Internet monitoring, I'm not terribly optimistic.

Things like this make me sad for humanity. Death threats over this? You'd think Oculus Rift was about to commit genocide, install a dictatorship, and kill all puppies and kittens. Some people have no sense of perspective and immense anger issues.

We expected a kneejerk from reaction from people who don't have all the information we do, and will not have it for some time,

...

Quote:

The onus is on us to educate people, and we want to share everything we’re doing.

You're doing a terrible job of educating people. If you hide something, everybody is going to assume they won't like what you're hiding. Especially if you have a history of being extremely open, then why else would you be hiding it?

How about you release whatever information you have that makes you confidant the Facebook purchase is great news? If you're telling the truth then most of your core audience will agree with your logic.

Presumably the contract with Facebook requires you go keep silent about many of those details. That's the first bad news from this acquisition, you just transferred from being a company that works with the community to one that works in secret.

Personally in your position I would have kept the Facebook buyout secret, and not signed any contracts, until I could announce all the details of the deal. You can work with Facebook on the project without them buying you.

I'm not saying death threats are in any way acceptable. But there is plenty of cause for people to be concerned. With so many truly passionate fans, this kind of reaction is pretty much what I would have expected.

My initial reaction was negative, but after a few hours I decided to trust Oculus to do the right thing. You've clearly got good people running the company, and so long as they don't all resign I will assume the Facebook purchase is a good thing. But not everyone is as trusting as I am.

That said, I think not expecting death threats is kind of the minimum level we need to function in society.

Not really. The anonymity of the internet has rendered worthless death threats easy to make, such that some people making death threats is to be expected for anything anger inducing. That has not stopped the function of society. Indeed that he said "so many death threats" says to me that they expected some death threats, and just got more than they expected.

Given the general commonality of worthless internet death threats, I'm cynical enough that any time someone says "we got death threats" in a controversial case like this, I see is as a calculated attempt to play for sympathy, and deflected criticism by smearing the critics with the brush of the extremists. It does not help my cynicism that it's common for people to treat expressions of ill will such as "go die in a fire", "go kill yourself", "I hope you and your family die", as death threats, despite not actually being a threat or promise to do anything. Which greatly magnifies the amount of death threats when seeking sympathy.

The harassing phone affecting family members thing also leaves me unmoved. I highly doubt anyone is specifically seeking out and calling siblings, parents, etc. More likely they are attempting to call him at home, and either a family member happens to pick up instead, or it's old or incorrect information and they get a family member instead. Either way attempting to portray it as a deliberate attempt to harass family members just makes it another attempt to play for sympathy, and use the actions of the minority to stifle the majority of critics.

Things like this make me sad for humanity. Death threats over this? You'd think Oculus Rift was about to commit genocide, install a dictatorship, and kill all puppies and kittens. Some people have no sense of perspective and immense anger issues.

This so much this. There are actually important things in this world where I could understand the passion where a death threat results. Harming kids or even animals. Genocide, war, wiping out peoples retirement savings. Someone that took your job. I get the passion there. But this is a video game accessory that is not even at the consumer level yet. Get a grip on yourself. If you are this worked up maybe its time to go out and interact with Reality.

Actually strike that last bit I am not sure I want these people in my reality maybe they need to stick to the virtual for all of our sakes.

Apparently, some particularly vitriolic commenters felt comfortable saying that death sentence should extend to the technology's creators and their families as well.

"We expected a negative reaction from people in the short term, [but] we did not expect to be getting so many death threats and harassing phone calls that extended to our families," Oculus Founder Palmer Luckey said in a Reddit post this weekend. "We know we will prove ourselves with actions and not words, but that kind of shit is unwarranted, especially since it is impacting people who have nothing to do with Oculus."

I can't even fully-imagine the enormous ass-holiness of someone actually calling FAMILY MEMBERS... just to make "death threats" to them.

Those are the types of "terrorists" the NSA should be tracking-down via phone taps.

I confess, I have a really hard time understanding the depth of the negativity to this partnership. Moreover, I've read numerous polemics about how FB isn't a hardware company and is thus likely to screw this up.

I would argue, given FB's movements in the hardware space over the last few years (reported on by this very site itself: http://arstechnica.com/information-tech ... e-know-it/ and several other articles by the venerable Sean Gallagher), that one of their fundamental goals is to *become* a hardware company (even if only for internal purposes).

Realistically? I'd argue this move plays more into their long-term strategy than does the acquisition of WhatsApp or Instagram. Those are just apps. Occulus (and their open server designs) is (are) a platform. That's a much more powerful acquisition in 2014.

Things like this make me sad for humanity. Death threats over this? You'd think Oculus Rift was about to commit genocide, install a dictatorship, and kill all puppies and kittens. Some people have no sense of perspective and immense anger issues.

Everyone thinks it's okay to wish you die in a fire or whatever garbage because you can't see them. More specifically many if not most have dark thoughts and when you can't see them it's okay to be internet-tough-guys.

Death threats aren't warranted at all, but unexpected? This is the internet. A vile cesspool of human scum and noisy hatred with occasional swirls of positivity. Unfortunately since we instinctively seem to focus on the negativity, tuning out the worthless noise becomes difficult. Facebook's reputation seems very very bad news to people who saw a really interesting gaming peripheral develop and are probably the last name you'd ever want to drag into a conversation about that. Whether that will end badly or no we've yet to see but it does take a certain level of immature stupidity to harass these people's families. I imagine at some point the tables will turn on the harassers and that suddenly they wont be cool with it oddly enough.

How is it a "high horse of entitlement" to have a serious negative reaction to something that was seen as a long term hope coming to fruition being sold to a company like Facebook?

Any type of threat toward the actual people, or anyone close to them, is clearly beyond the pale, and shows that the Internet is chock full of wing nuts and truly despicable people. That said, I'll be hard pressed to lay my money down for a Rift when it finally reaches the market simply because of Zuckerberg's influence. While the members of Oculus have stated that they maintain intellectual freedom and control over the development of the Rift, I have my doubts that it's going to play out that way. That usually isn't how things work nowadays. Time will tell, yes, but I'm reserving my judgement, and I'll be very difficult to convince.

How is this not entitlement. Occulus Rift owes you nothing. If you backed their kickstarter project they already gave you what they agreed too and your transaction is done. If you don't like what they do then don't buy their product but other then that you don't get to tell them how to run their company. They did not break any laws they took a massive windfall in cash and stocks that will give them a better chance to compete in the market place in the future. The only people that would not "sell out" are idiots and teenagers.

I fully understand the negativity towards the Facebook acquisition, but threats of violence seem overboard.

Yes, so far as I am concerned, Facebook is devoid of value, and will try and do something stupid and obnoxious with this. I anticipate problems related to my lack of a facebook login.

That said, I don't understand threats of death over a piece of computer hardware. I mean, it's not like the acquisition was for "Oculus Rift and related technologies, and the privilege of sodomizing everyone interested in such with a chainsaw".

Apparently, some particularly vitriolic commenters felt comfortable saying that death sentence should extend to the technology's creators and their families as well.

"We expected a negative reaction from people in the short term, [but] we did not expect to be getting so many death threats and harassing phone calls that extended to our families," Oculus Founder Palmer Luckey said in a Reddit post this weekend. "We know we will prove ourselves with actions and not words, but that kind of shit is unwarranted, especially since it is impacting people who have nothing to do with Oculus."

I can't even fully-imagine the enormous ass-holiness of someone actually calling FAMILY MEMBERS... just to make "death threats" to them.

It's highly unlikely people are actually doing that. It's not even clear from his comment if the "death threats" are included in the "harassing phone calls." The most likely scenario is people attempting to call him at home, but only having an old phone number. Resulting in them talking to a parent, and venting on them instead as a matter of opportunity.

I fully understand the negativity towards the Facebook acquisition, but threats of violence seem overboard.

Yes, so far as I am concerned, Facebook is devoid of value, and will try and do something stupid and obnoxious with this. I anticipate problems related to my lack of a facebook login.

That said, I don't understand threats of death over a piece of computer hardware. I mean, it's not like the acquisition was for "Oculus Rift and related technologies, and the privilege of sodomizing everyone interested in such with a chainsaw".

The threats of violence are a tiny minority of the reaction that's being brought up to discredit the majority of the critics.

Yeah, as much as I've ranted about the bad-ness of Facebook in other relevant articles, and I've gone from a day-one-buy to a never-buy, I'm just going to keep my response down to this:

Issuing death threats to people who have done nothing on any order of magnitude close to that is not cool.

And the one thing that I DO agree with Oculus on is that in spite of the grassroots Kickstarter openings, they pretty much needed to be bought out by *someone*. Virtual reality is too awesome to be half-assed. We're now more aware than ever of all the problems that need to be solved for it, but they can't be solved on a shoestring budget, much less turned into a large market opportunity (ie, an Oculus Appstore).